


Submerge

by LadyShiba



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 21:19:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6130402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShiba/pseuds/LadyShiba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey meditates on the beach of Ahch-To to dispel fears and feelings of isolation and has a vision. Understanding makes hate hard to come by, especially when she craves the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Submerge

**Author's Note:**

> Have mercy. This is the first time I've attempted to write any kind of lemony/ smutty thing.

She had been touched; sifted. Never before had anyone laid out her deepest longings and sorrows so clearly, in such plain words. It was injurious, how simply he’d done it. Why- _why-_ did Kylo Ren’s dark, murderous hand have to be the one to trace the scars on her heart so accurately; to know and understand them with such soul-crushing ease?

 

She’d repaid him with a scar of his own, but that could never take away what he knew about her.

 

Rey inhaled the sea air, halting her racing thoughts for a moment while she removed her boots, allowing her toes to sink down into the sun-warmed sand. With minor trepidation, she approached the water’s edge until she was just close enough that when she sat with her legs outstretched, the slow-lapping waves came up to the backs of her knees. Releasing the breath she’d been holding, she lay back, weaving her fingers into the dry grains. Here, and like this, she would meditate for her troubles as Master Luke had suggested.

 

Even though she’d not told him, he’d picked up on her inner conflict nonetheless. _“I won’t force it out of you, but it’s the demons we don’t make peace with that come to possess us, Rey,”_ he’d advised, speaking from years of bitter, unforgiving experience.

 

Steeling herself against fear, Rey quietly admitted to herself what it was about her brief time as Kylo Ren’s captive that haunted her so. After fifteen years of lonely toil on the backwater desert that was Jakku, and after getting her first taste of freedom and friendship, the very thing she’d come to crave more than anything was understanding. In part, that wish had been fulfilled in the likes of Finn, Chewie, and Leia. Finn shared her fierce devotion to their new comrades in the Resistance, and more than comprehended the sweet and frightening awkwardness of finally breaking free of a slaver’s leash. For him, it was the First Order; for her, that pudgy bastard, Unkar Plutt.  Leia knew what it meant to lose family—to be in denial of that loss just to get by day to day—and then, ultimately having to accept that retrieving them was impossible. Life had seemingly dealt the General one bad hand after another over the past thirty or so years. Han in particular was like the icing on that morbid, terrible cake for all of them, and Rey had just barely gotten to know him…

 

Rey clenched her teeth and balled her hands into tight fists. It was dangerous to grieve for too long, and even more so to hold a grudge, regardless of the crime. The Dark Side was always reaching, wanting, and beseeching her with forbidden thoughts of closure through violence. Even if she took that path, what then? What had transpired would still be _there,_ in her memory. There was no washing that away.

 

But forgiveness or passive serenity had the same consequences. What had happened had happened, and there was no undoing it. It was with her forever. She’d been afraid to leave Jakku not just because she was waiting for her family to come back, but because she knew— _she knew—_ that she could lose all over again, and that was a thought she could not bear. How quickly it had come to pass anyway, against all of her hopes. It was…isolating. More isolating than subsisting in the desert all alone had ever been, in a way. For that, her newfound friends could offer little. There would always be those little, painful, nuanced glass shards of difference in experience that could never quite be plucked out or fully explained. The sense of abandonment still hung heavy over her head in spite of the warm company she’d found.  She still struggled with that cold, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach—the cruel ache of being separate no matter how close to others she allowed herself to be.

 

Having come to embrace her Force sensitivity along with her destiny as a Jedi was alienating in its own right. Master Luke was an old man, and when he died, she’d be the only one on this side of the war. At least, the only one she knew of. More isolation while hoping to run into those she belonged with, then. Always the same circumstances, simply dressed in different clothes.

 

               Irony of irony, the only one to have picked up on that feeling; that specific fear and the depths of desperation it caused, was the same one to have turned around reinforced it in a horrifying act of patricide. Kylo Ren, the man she’d come to view as something of an arch-nemesis. Or at least, she wanted to. It was difficult to recall those moments on Starkiller, before he’d murdered Han, without reflecting in stupefied awe at the spike in energy that had passed between them—an exchange of sorts, a split second where all malice had vanished, and the Force had knotted around them in tight, confusing twists.

 

She wanted to be angrier. The bastard had entered her mind, and had taken the one thing she’d never supposed she’d have to guard from him: The ability to understand her more deeply and perfectly than anyone else far more deserving had been given the opportunity to. He’d eventually use it against her, she was sure. Rey wanted to hate him, but she had glimpsed into his mind in rabid defense, ripping out his fear like a still-beating heart to show him before death took him—something she could hold over him. She knew that he was lonely, desperate, insecure—afraid that he’d never measure up to the legendary monster that was Darth Vader. She knew _him._

 

_“You know I can take whatever I want,”_ her mind replayed the memory of his words in mocking response.

 

Rey clutched harder at fistfuls of sand. She’d successfully protected the map to Luke, to this island, but in return, it was as though she’d inadvertently handed Ren a piece of herself instead. Tears broke out from the corners of her closed eyelids, and streamed down her temples and into her hair. She knew all about insecurity, didn’t she? Understanding made pure hatred too hard to come by.

 

Was it the same for him? Would Ren’s ability to despise her be crippled for what he’d seen?

 

_“Don’t be afraid; I feel it too.”_ More taunting echoes.

 

She shuddered as the waves lapped up her legs just another few inches. High tide wasn’t far off. Meditation shouldn’t be rushed, but for whatever reason, the water’s edge was just what _worked._ Rey quieted her mind as best she could, and stretched out her senses. The Force responded easily to her beck and call. She’d become familiar enough with it to know that it was strong with her, and probably always had been. Without its Light, she wouldn’t have survived growing up as she had, or at the least, it would have broken her. In the absence of sleep or true calm, she instinctively knew that she could conjure up mental images of this place as her escape, and that it would be enough to give her the will to continue scavenging another day.

 

Sadly, now that she was present in body, there was nowhere left for her mind to run—not from the persistent loneliness, and not from herself. There was no escaping the fact that, although she now trained as a Jedi, her first experiments with the Force had not all been backed by that familiar Light. When she’d struck Kylo Ren down, the urge to deliver a killing blow had possessed her; leapt forward from her fear like a rabid animal, such that only the crumbling environment had saved her from herself. She was strong, she’d learned—so very strong with the Force, and the Dark Side wanted her just as much as the Light.

 

As the water danced over Rey’s finger tips, the sea breeze and growing white noise in her head coalesced together into a hazy vision: A warm, strong hand cupped her cheek. Comfort. A face she couldn’t see, and a voice she couldn’t place for the mental static. There were murmurs, and what sounded like a throbbing, synchronized double heart-beat. Against her better judgement, she felt compelled to trust the benevolent presence, this being cloaked in the Force. She sensed strength, something like a new-found resolve, emanating from this person, their intentions obscure, but not malicious…At least, not for her. Never for her. There was an unspoken longing, something she could identify with, and so she leaned into the palm against her face, sighing deeply.

 

“Help me,” she breathed; thought more than spoke. She had heard of Force ghosts before. Perhaps this was one of the old masters Luke had told her about, come to aid her?

 

Rey was mesmerized—so much that she didn’t question it at first when the other person lifted her hand, gently folding her fingers so that only her pointer and middle stood out. Realization only dawned on her as he used her extended digits to trace a long, diagonal imprint from his brow to his jaw-line. She knew that scar. She’d created it. _He_ was here, invading the meditation that was supposed to have cleared her mind and restored her peace. Rey flinched violently, trying to draw back into normal consciousness, but the vision held fast, and her brief solace turned to dread.

 

The only clarity she attained was in the fading of the fog that had disguised him. Kylo Ren.

 

Her heart was racing, and she stumbled back a step, reclaiming her hand as if it had been bitten. What could she do now? She couldn’t wake up, so there was no running. This was a vision, so there would be no fighting either. That thought stopped her short of entertaining a full-fledged panic—there had to be a limit to what they could really do to one another here.

 

But before she could fully take comfort in that idea, he was on her, his gloved palm spread wide over the center of her forehead. Rey froze, waiting for the familiar onslaught of pain that accompanied Ren’s mind probe. And waited. The pain never came, just an odd pulling, prickling sensation behind her eyes that lifted as soon as he spoke. 

 

“You surround yourself with the frauds you call heroes, but still so lonely,” he quietly declared, his voice laced with something that, if she’d heard it from anyone else, Rey would have mistaken it for empathy.

 

“I see you’ve mastered that little trick,” she bit out, dodging his personal commentary. She would not—could not—give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’d so rightly pin-pointed her innermost turmoil yet again.

 

“I already know, Rey,” Kylo murmured through a half-grin, drawing his hand down the side of her face to wipe away one of the damp tear streaks. “You don’t have to hide it from me.”

 

“Because you’d have a change of heart and give me a choice in the matter?” Rey snapped, batting his hand away. She did a slight double take when he neither resisted nor retaliated. Then again, it wasn’t as though she’d been taken prisoner this time, was it? “Leave me. Now,” she demanded, turning her back on him, deigning to walk off into the ether herself.  This was _her_ vision. She made the rules here; not him.

 

Long, muscular arms snaked around her shoulders then, and pulled her back hard against Ren’s chest.

 

“I called you here,” he sharply whispered, correcting her presumption, his lips ghosting along the edge of her ear.

 

Rey shivered perversely in response to the sensation of his hissing breath, and her voice caught in her throat. “Why?” she croaked out.

 

“You want to despise me, but you can’t. I know things about you that no one could ever hope to grasp—not like you need them to,” Kylo paused, sucking in a ragged, frustrated breath, “and you took the same from me.”

 

She swallowed hard at his half-answer. There was nothing left to discuss. Rey knew obsession when she saw it, and shamefully, was already too familiar with it. The feeling was mutual. How many nights had she already lost, insulting a cliff wall while Luke slept, pretending it was Kylo? How many chunks of boulder had she carved out with her master’s lightsaber under the full moon, hoping only that it would relieve some of the angry, seething tension caused by their bizarre connection? They were, perhaps in spite of themselves, very much the same in many respects.

 

A chill passed under her arms, and she briefly remembered the rising tide. Maybe he knew about that too, and was trying to drown her.

 

“There’s nothing to be done about it,” she replied curtly, not bothering to attempt slipping out of his embrace.

 

“There is,” Kylo countered, running his hands down the lengths of her arms before turning her to face him. “You know there is.”

 

It only took Rey one glance into his glazed, hungry eyes to understand. Whatever ties had formed between them, Kylo only meant to strengthen, and so he was here—or rather, he’d created this astral place between them; a place to which she’d inevitably wander because of how he’d plagued her thoughts. She’d unwittingly crawled beneath his skin, just as he had hers, and now he wanted her, physically, spiritually—any way he could have her. It was a prospect that should have been frightening and maybe repulsive, but like her desire to hate him, the _correct_ thoughts eluded her. Instead, she found that her focus, oh so treacherous that it was, trained on his dark eyes, his full lips. Rey’s mouth went dry, and she shook her head in disbelief. An attractive monster was still a monster. _Wasn’t he?_

 

He considered her for a minute more before he removed his gloves, and took her face his in hands.

 

In tenuous reciprocation, she reached for him, lightly touching his cheek with the tips of her fingers. She should not be with him like this—exploring—she should not—

              

But then, he pressed his lips softly to hers, and Rey gasped, an opening just enough for Ren to slip his tongue between her teeth. Sudden, but not unbearably rough—unexpectedly sweet and warm, even--he coaxed her into returning the kiss. _No, that was an excuse forged of shame and she knew it. She was doing this of her own accord. She could have pushed him away, could have continued to fight or struggle, but she chose not to. She chose to welcome Kylo Ren instead, for all her failing to understand fully why._ A familiar energy—just like back from that odd moment when he was interrogating her—surged to life again, ensnaring both of them, far less fleeting this time.

 

Anticipation, want, and fear gathered in the pit of Rey’s stomach, and she couldn’t stop her body’s incessant trembling. As they separated, she pressed her forehead against his chest, leaning into him. “What are we doing, Kylo? What is this?” she mumbled, a half-hearted protest.

 

They were supposed to be adversaries—enemies in a fight for the galaxy itself, but that didn’t hold true here somehow. Not right now.

 

“What do you want it to be?” he queried in return, goading her. 

              

As always, he came off like he knew more than he was letting on, only dropping precious breadcrumbs for her to consider. Rey sighed heavily, and pulled him down for another kiss, raking her fingers through his soft, thick hair.  Something in the Force went wild when they were together like this, and that in of itself was a strange kind of high, in addition to the adrenaline already pumping its way through her veins.

 

“Whatever you had in mind,” she breathed after a prolonged pause, aware of what she was resigning herself to. Or perhaps, what she was implicitly asking for—nothing she wanted to admit it out loud because of how completely absurd it felt.

 

“Do you have any idea what I want, Rey?”

 

Rey nodded, averting her eyes when he lifted her chin to hold her gaze.

 

“It won’t be just this once,” he continued—promised--as his other hand crept just beneath the hem of her shirt, and came to rest just above her hip, fingers massaging the small of her back. “I will find you when we’re finished here.”

 

“You can try,” she softly retorted, hoping he’d knock off the taunting and get on with it.

 

“You’ll see,” Kylo whispered, and claimed her lips again.

 

The hand he’d tucked beneath her shirt ghosted up her ribcage, groping at the side of her breast while his thumb gently flicked over the taut, aroused nipple poking up through one more flimsy layer of cloth. The small, intimate caress sent a tiny jolt of pleasure racing down her spine and into her core.

 

Rey panted slightly as their lips parted and merged, pretending not to hear the small moan that escaped her throat. The moment was taking on an intensity that the simple idea couldn’t parallel. She’d never let anyone touch her like that before, herself excluded on the occasional cold night. It had never even been a consideration, simply surviving from day to day on Jakku. She’d neither the time, the energy, nor the will—not when starvation was always at hand.  And now, of all people, here she was with this beautiful psychopath, ready to share this with him because _he knew her, and she him, in a way that only they possibly could._

Needy, Kylo stopped playing games. He plucked her tunic and shirt over her head together, wriggling them free of her arms and casting them aside before pinning her into an invisible wall, sucking, nipping and kissing from her neck down to her shoulder.

 

Rey gasped upon impact, her racing thoughts halting and face burning red under his lurid ministrations. Her need was growing quickly, aching and slick between her legs, insatiable to innuendos and heavy petting alone. She reached down into the narrow space between them, unlatching the clasp of the belt that held his ensemble together, reaching beneath his tunic and coat to stroke the hard, rippled plane of his lower abdomen. Suppressing the urge to keen each time his mouth found just the right spot above her clavicle, she gave into the temptation to follow the trail of fevered skin down, down beneath his trousers until the tips of her fingers danced along the erect, hard length of his shaft.

 

Kylo lifted and tilted his head then, seemingly blindsided by how incredibly _forward_ she was willing to be. They both paused in place, staring one another down, each daring the other to make the next move. The way he was looking at her was not unlike the moments before she’d marked him—so very intense, boring into her as if he himself could command the Force at work within her and between them. Maybe he could. To an extent, he had to have; otherwise, they would not be here.

 

“You wear too much,” Rey complained, nonchalantly relinquishing her exploration of his arousal and distracting herself from the silly, self-conscious ideas trying to take root in her head for the novelty of the act.  

 

With a half-grin, he backed off as little as he could to peel away the layers of black clothing—close enough that she could still feel the heat radiating from his body. Close enough that she could still smell him, a curious scent that was somewhere between a natural burning fire and fresh soap. Close enough that she could admire the way his toned arms flexed and rolled when he moved, and consider the near future _usefulness_ of his decidedly large hands. Her eyes darted down when he stripped his lower half, biting the inside of her mouth when she beheld how erect, swollen, and thick he was.

 

Wordlessly, Rey followed suit, reaching behind her to unfasten her breast band, but all it took was that one glance away, and his hands had seized hers, taking over the task and claiming her mouth again, this time with a predatory eagerness that made her heart thunder in her ears.

 

He mingled their kisses with small bites at her lower lip, guiding her away from the wall when he’d discarded all but her panties. Kneeling, Kylo pulled her down with him, interlocking their fingers and coaxing her to lay back so that he could position himself over her on all fours.

 

“I presume _this_ is more to your liking,” he delicately purred, nuzzling his face to hers.

 

“Yeah…” Rey replied in a semi-abashed tone, trying so hard to will her blood not to surge to her face.  She could feel him drinking her in, meshing and aligning with how she lusted after him; feel his desire grow by the second as if it were her own—although restrained in a way that she did not expect, as if a small measure of her anxiety had bled into him.

 

Pressing his forehead to hers, he released her arms to cup her face instead. “I won’t hurt you. Don’t be afraid.”

 

Rey wanted to laugh, wondering if maybe that really was a pick-up line for him, but banished the idea as he began kissing down the length of her body—her chest, the valley between her breasts, her navel, and ending just above the only piece of clothing separating them. She drew her legs up without prompt, allowing him to thread them through with ease.

 

Now, it was just them, naked and wanton together.

 

Kylo hovered over her once more on one arm, locking their eye contact as he used one knee to nudge her legs apart. Two fingers slipped between her intimate folds, searching out and kneading the sensitive bud of nerves there in slow, deliberate circles.

 

Toes curling, Rey held her breath. She’d pleasured herself this way before, but at the hands of another— _or maybe at his hands specifically—_ it was different. She was used to a steady build of heat and pressure, and a measured pace that efficiently lead to a small but sweet contraction. What he was doing to her was tying her lower abdomen in exquisite little knots while blood-heat burst and spread throughout her nether region. He was purposely overwhelming her, making it just slightly too intense to climax, and it felt so _good and uncontrolled,_ how he made her squirm and gasp. 

 

Infuriating, Kylo gave and gave, and yet denied, and Rey finally whimpered, “Please…”

 

“Please?” he murmured, slipping both fingers inside of her instead. “I had no intention of making you beg, but if you must…”

 

Rey groaned, arching her back beneath him, urging him to stroke deeper.

 

He acquiesced momentarily, curving his plunging and retreating fingers to press into that _perfect spot_ on her front wall.

 

Any apprehension or shame should thought she had was forgotten as she undulated her hips against his hand, mewling lasciviously with each motion. Waves of pleasure mounted one upon the other, and she could feel that it would only be a little more until they all crashed down over her. Only a few more thrusts and then—

 

Kylo removed his fingers, and crushed her mouth with his as if to devour her, the breaking point of his need flooding into her mind to fuel her own. He adjusted himself between her legs so that she felt the tip of his shaft at her entrance. Inch by calculated inch, he pushed forward, easing into her until he was completely sheathed.

 

Rey buried her hands in his hair as their lips parted, wincing. It wasn’t extremely painful—just a small pinch while her body adjusted to being stretched and filled by him. She sucked in deep breaths, waiting for him to begin moving, but at first he only stared down at her, searching her eyes, touching her face and tucking the strands of hair that had fallen loose from her buns behind her ears. “I’m okay,” she reassured him.

 

He picked up a slow and sensual pace then, pushing into her deep but gently so, retracting and repeating.

 

She moved with him, relishing the shockwaves each collision their adjoined bodies sent through her, reverberating up through her spine and prickling at the back of her neck.  A sheen of their mixed sweat coated them as the urgency of their movements grew. Rey licked her lips, her eyes rolling back into her head while she wrapped her legs around Kylo’s torso.

 

_“Faster,”_ she panted the word out. He was letting her burn and smolder from the inside out, while she craved an explosion.

 

At her plea, he turned feral, ploughing into her harder, wet flesh slapping against wet flesh, and she moaned, softly biting into his shoulder while her nails drew small trails up and down his back.

****

She was getting close, just at the very edge, wanting nothing more than to fall over into its welcoming oblivion. Her body grew overwhelmingly hot as he continued to pump into her, worshipping her with his hands and mouth, pinching, kissing, and licking the erogenous places he’d so quickly figured out—the small of her back, the space just above her clavicle, her breasts, and the backs of her thighs. The heat and tension built and built, like the delicious sensation of an itch being scratched by their friction, but so much more than that. Rey could feel herself growing tighter around his length, and she arched her hips up to meet his harder yet, only able to think about how she wanted _more and more and more_ , inhaling deep and erratically. Then, at last, involuntary convulsions ripped through her where their bodies connected. Hard, clenching spasms blossomed forth into blinding pleasure that coursed from the heart of her core down into her legs, up her spine, and raised the tiny hairs on her arms.

 

“Kylo-!” she gasped, her voice hitching on his name while she clung to him, driving her nails into his back to hold on for dear life.

 

Finishing only seconds later, he shuddered over her and collapsed. Planting a gentle kiss under her ear, he reiterated his initial promise, “I will find you, Rey.”

 

She struggled to catch her breath, but felt something catch in her throat. Violent coughs erupted from her lungs, and water spluttered out of her mouth. She reached for Kylo, but her arms found only empty space. Eyes opening wide and terrified, she found that was no longer writhing in heated passion beneath the man who should be her enemy, but was instead about two inches underneath the oncoming surf, flirting with the possibility of drowning. Starved for oxygen, she shot up out of the water, inhaling sharply.

 

Rey cast a glance down at her drenched but still-clothed body, baffled. She rubbed her neck, searching for the fresh love-bites and bruises she’d felt Ren inflict upon her, but found nothing but whole, untouched skin and a stray cord of seaweed. Still just a vision after all, then.

 

Just a vision, but possibly not hers alone.


End file.
